Letter from the Editor

Perhaps before Katrina we could pretend we didn't notice the widening gulf between the wealthy and those left behind.

The hurricane made it impossible to ignore. The disabled, the elderly,
and the poor—especially people of color—were left to fend for
themselves with few resources to draw from. Many were even treated as
criminals.

Today, well-connected corporations are winning huge, no-bid contracts
for rebuilding the region, and the waiving of labor and environmental
protections means that wages can be sub-par and water and soil left
contaminated. Money is flowing, the powerful are making decisions, and
the poor and displaced are once again missing from the table.
This is a moral crisis if ever there was one.

Shortly after the 2004 election, Zogby pollsters asked voters to
identify the most serious moral crisis in the U.S. You wouldn't know it
by listening to the pundits, but only 12 percent cited gay marriage and
16 percent abortion. For 33 percent, the greatest moral challenge was
greed and materialism. For 31 percent, it was poverty and economic
justice.

So why the deafening silence about poverty and the precarious position
of the middle class? Political leaders clam up when they get accused of
“class warfare.” Campaigns, after all, require contributions from
corporations and wealthy interests.

Religious leaders also are surprisingly quiet on economic issues. On
the Right, they focus instead on hot-button social issues that assign
blame for all manner of ills to gay people, women, and immigrants. They
imply, contrary to the teachings of
Jesus, that the poor are less worthy in the eyes of God. Meanwhile,
progressive religious leaders seemed to have lost their voices—until
recently.

There is, now, a spiritual uprising under way in the United States that
is taking on this moral crisis. At its center are people like Rabbi
Michael Lerner, who has been calling for a “new bottom line” based not
on greed and materialism but on the well-being of people and the
environment. And Reverend Jim Wallis has turned his book tour for God
and Politics into a series of revival meetings for people looking for a
prophetic response to the corporate/right-wing vision ruling our
country.

Religions, through the millennia, have taken a strong stand on poverty
and materialism, often to the discomfort of the comfortable. Muslim
teachings prohibit usury because debt is so often the road to
persistent poverty. The Old Testament proclaims the Jubilee, when debt
is to be forgiven, slaves freed, and land returned. Northwest coastal
tribes hold potlatches in which wealth is given away freely. And of
course Jesus focused his ministry on the excluded, preaching good news
to the poor about a transformation that would bring the Kingdom of God
to Earth.

In this issue of YES!, diverse religious and spiritual voices issue a
call for solidarity. As they have on other pivotal issues—from the
struggle against slavery and child labor to the call to save the Earth
—the religious community is rising up, proclaiming the spiritual truth
that we are all one.

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